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| RHAPSODIC VARIATIONS |  | Maurice Ravel
Ma mère l'oye
Maurice Ravel loved children although he never had any of his own. While visiting friends, he frequently ended up in the nursery playing with the kids. Two of his favorites were Jean and Marie, the children of his long-time friends Cyprian and Ida Godebski. Both children played piano well, and in 1908 Ravel surprised them with a gift of a composition, the five-piece suite for piano four hands, Ma mère l’oye. Ravel wrote: “My intention of awakening the poetry of childhood in these pieces naturally led me to simplify my style and thin out my writing.” The inspiration for the work came from the seventeenth-century collection of European fairy tales by Charles Perrault entitled Contes de ma mère l’oye (Mother Goose Stories). These, incidentally, do not correspond with the collection of nursery rhymes by British writer John Newbery, whose collection of mostly traditional rhymes, published in 1765, usurped the title. Rather, some of Perrault’s tales turn up in the nineteenth-century collection of the brothers Grimm. Ravel’s Suite was premiered in Paris in 1910, but not by the Godebski children.
When in 1911 Ravel was asked to compose a ballet for performance in the Théātre des Arts, he orchestrated the Suite and added some numbers, always retaining the light touch. But it is the original five-movement Suite that is most frequently performed:
1. Pavane de la belle au bois dormant (Pavane of the Sleeping Beauty): In this slow dreamy dance, Ravel uses the flute and harp to portray Sleeping Beauty in the forest. 
2. Petit poucet (Tom Thumb): The oboe and English horn depicts Tom Thumb’s disappointment when the birds (piccolo, clarinet) eat the crumbs that were meant to guide his family home.
3. Laideronnette, impératrice des pagodas (Ugly Little Empress of the Pagodas): A popular decorating accessory in eighteenth-century France, a pagoda was a Chinese figurine with a grotesque face and a movable head. The Empress is taking a bath while little dolls entertain her by singing and playing on tiny instruments. Ravel employs the pentatonic scale, played by glockenspiel and xylophone to give it oriental flavor.
4. Les entretiens de la belle et de la bête (The Conversation between Beauty and the Beast): In this slow waltz, Beauty is represented by the clarinet; grotesque bass notes in the contrabassoon imitate the grunting of the ugly beast until a glissando on harp, transforms him back into a handsome prince.
5. Le jardin féerique (The Fairy Garden): Here, the Prince awakens Sleeping Beauty. A quiet melody develops into the only forte section of the whole work, a series of bell-like glissandi.
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| | |  | | | | Sergey Rachmaninov | | | 1873-1943 | | |
Sergey Rachmaninov
Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini
Sergey Rachmaninov grew up in a musical family, middle-class but under strained economic conditions. His gifts as a pianist were recognized early, but he had always wanted to compose and considered himself a composer first, pianist second. Already established as a performer, he gained instant fame as a composer at age 19 with his Prelude in c-sharp minor, a work that haunted him all his life because audiences always expected – and demanded – it as an encore to his concerts.
The premiere performance of Rachmaninov's First Symphony took place in St. Petersburg in 1897. It was a dismal failure, in large part due to the shoddy conducting of Alexander Glazunov, who was drunk. The disappointment brought on a severe depression, and for three years Rachmaninov was unable to do any significant composing. Finally in 1900 he went for therapy and hypnosis to Dr. Nikolay Dahl. The result was one of the first well-known successes of modern psychotherapy. Rachmaninov was consequently able to return to creative work on his Second Piano Concerto, dedicated to Dahl. Relapses into depression dogged Rachmaninov, however, for the rest of his life. And significantly, all his large instrumental compositions, as well as most of the rest of his oeuvre, are in minor keys.
For 25 years Rachmaninov managed to divide his time comfortably among composing, conducting and performing, with composing having priority. But this idyllic life was changed drastically in 1917 by the Russian Revolution which, as a conservative and traditionalist, he viewed with horror. That year, Rachmaninov left the country with his family never to return, eventually settling in the United States. His sources of income having dried up, he became a full-time pianist for the rest of his life, leaving him little time to compose.
One of Rachmaninov’s late works was the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, composed in 1934, a set of variations based on the 24th Caprice from Niccoló Paganini’s Caprices for Violin Solo, Op.1. This Caprice – itself a set of bravura variations – has also served such diverse composers as Chopin, Liszt, Schumann, Brahms, Schnittke and Lutoslawski. Rachmaninov played the premiere with the Philadelphia Orchestra in Baltimore under the baton of Leopold Stokowski.
The piece opens with an introduction that hints at the theme to come, followed by the first variation (which he labeled “precedente”), a skeletal version of the theme itself, using only the first note of each of Paganini’s measures – Beethoven had used a similar device to open the set of variation in the Finale of the Symphony No. 3 (Eroica), a stunningly novel approach for the time. Only afterwards does Rachmaninoff present the theme in full, following it with 23 more variations and a mischievous two-measure coda. The Variations give the pianist the same kind of virtuosic workout as its model did for showman Paganini.
In the Rhapsody, Rachmaninov reveals an inventiveness – and even an uncharacteristic sense of humor – that rendered it an instant success with audiences and pianists alike. While the Paganini Variations concentrate on virtuosic pyrotechnics, Rachmaninov imbues the little tune with a wide array of eccentric rhythms (Var. 2), clever harmonizations (Var. 15) and changing moods. (Var. 8) Yet however much a variation appears to stray from the theme, the underlying harmonic structure remains constant.
Rachmaninov provides two surprises that save the work from unrelenting repetitiveness so common with long sets of variations. One is in Variation 7 with the appearance of a second theme, the Dies irae chant from the Catholic Mass for the Dead that reminds mourners of the terrors of the Day of Judgment. It is a theme that recurs frequently in Rachmaninov’s music, usually in the most somber contexts, but here it has a decidedly tongue-in-cheek flavor: while the piano plays the Dies irae, the orchestra continues to play the Paganini theme, with which it conveniently harmonizes perfectly . The Dies irae recurs in later variations, but always balanced by the main theme and never imposing its lugubrious atmosphere on the composition.
The second highlight occurs in Variation 18. Nearly all of Rachmaninov’s music is in minor keys. Yet, “compelled” by tradition to compose at least one variation in the opposite mode, he accentuated the contrast by not only composing Variation 18 in the major mode, but inverting the theme as well. Listeners often think of this variation as a totally new theme. And indeed, it bears a striking similarity to the composer's romantic second themes in his symphonies and piano concerti.
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| | | Edward Elgar
Enigma Variations, Op.36
If you look at photographs of Edward Elgar, read about his tastes or listen to his music, he appears to project the stereotype of Imperial Britain’s aristocracy or, as composer Constant Lambert described Elgar, “[the image of]... an almost intolerable air of smugness, self-assurance and autocratic benevolence...” His military bearing, walrus moustache, country gentleman’s dress – all very proper and Edwardian – matched his conservative, violently anti-Liberal ideas. His style appeared to have been fostered and fully sanctioned by the equally conservative Royal College of Music.
The reality was very different: Elgar was born to a lower middle class family and never served in the army. Worst of all, his father was a music store owner, or as the British used to say, “in trade.” He also was a Catholic, which did not help either. He was nervous, insecure, and prone to depression and hypochondria; he always carried a chip on his shoulder for not being “fully accepted.” Musically, he was completely self-taught. But to the chagrin of Britain’s music establishment, Elgar – an “outsider” – was the first English composer since Henry Purcell (1659-1695) to achieve world fame. It was the Enigma Variations that propelled him in 1899, at age 42, out of his parochial obscurity to worldwide recognition.
Elgar began the Variations as a private amusement for his wife, Alice, whom he adored. He created musical portraits of their friends, later turning them into a proper orchestral composition at her suggestion. The expressive and stately theme was his own, but Elgar claimed that he had employed a second, hidden theme combined with the main theme. This second theme has remained a mystery to this day, although in later years Elgar said that it was derived from a melody “...so well-known that it is strange no one has discovered it.”
The Elgar friends and their peculiarities are portrayed in the fourteen variations, each of which is headed by a nickname or initials, making some of the identities a puzzle as well – although by now scholars have figured them out.
The theme:
1. CAE – Elgar’s wife Caroline Alice, adding a romantic and delicate touch to the theme.
2. HDSP – H.D. Steuart-Powell, amateur pianist and chamber music partner of Elgar. The detached, rapid staccato note replicates the sound of the piano.
3. RBT – R.B. Townshend, author, eccentric and actor with a funny voice.
4. WMB – William M. Baker, a country squire and neighbor. The variation suggests that the man fancied the hunt.
5. RPA – Richard Arnold, son of poet Matthew Arnold, music lover, conversationalist and party wit. The contrast in the two parts of the variation suggests Arnold was eloquent on both serious and frivolous topics.
6. Ysobel – Isabel Fitton, an amateur violist with hopeless fingering difficulties.
7. Troyte – Arthur Troyte Griffin, well-known architect and terrible amateur pianist. The pounding of the timpani says it all.
8. WN – Miss Winifred Norbury, owner of an 18th century house and of a nervous laugh, both of which Elgar loved. It leads without pause to:
9. Nimrod (the Bible’s great hunter) – A.J. Jaeger (“hunter” in German), an editor at Novello, Elgar’s publisher. Jaeger’s encouragement and support were crucial for Elgar in his major debut. His love for Beethoven is hinted at in a quote from the Pathétique sonata. This, the second longest of the variations, is traditionally performed as a separate piece to memorialize the death of an orchestra musician.
10. Dorabella – Dora Penny, a frequent visitor with hesitant speech, whose nickname derived from Mozart’s Cosi fan tutte.
11. GRS – George R. Sinclair, organist; actually a musical description of Dan, Sinclair’s bulldog, falling into the river, paddling out and barking.
12. BGN – Basil G. Nevinson, amateur cellist and close friend.
13. *** – Lady Mary Lygon and a second, earlier, younger flame who had left Elgar heartbroken; one went to Australia, the other to New Zealand, hence the steamer engine thump and the quote from Mendelssohn’s Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage. The second part of the variation, a clarinet solo, suggests a wrenching farewell.
14. EDU – Edoo, the nickname for Elgar himself, known only to his closest friends; his self-portrait sounds quite heroic.
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| | | | Copyright © Elizabeth and Joseph Kahn 2008 | |
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